NARRATOR: DeFeo and a number of her fellow artists were fascinated by mountain climbing.

DANAMILLER: There were several very well-publicized ascents of Everest and K2 in the mid-50s that were incredibly romantic—these explorers and challenges that they faced. They were completely fascinated and reading all of the newspaper accounts and the books about them. I think they were inspired by the risk-taking and the high stakes of those kinds of adventures, and took that to be a metaphor.

NARRATOR: For DeFeo and her contemporaries, these tales were inspiration for their own creative adventures on an epic scale.